Bart clipper card replacement8/17/2023 ![]() ![]() If I had entered BART at one of the terminus stations, like Pittsburgh Bay Point, and traveled to SFO round-trip, I could have gamed BART for $21.80.īecause the cards still register the negative balance, and I would have to pay that down before I could add a positive balance to the card upon re-loading it, the smart thing to do would be to throw away the cards. When I tagged out at the International Terminal fare gates, instead of an "Insufficient Fare" warning, which I would have seen had I been using a $2 traditional BART fare card, my Clipper card subtracted $6.10, leaving me with a balance of $3.90 of someone else's money.Īfter completing my return trip to Civic Center with my other $2 Clipper card, I ended up with $16.20 worth of BART rides for $4. I rode to SFO, a trip that should have cost me $8.10. When I tagged into the system at the fare gate, the card had a $2 value. ![]() I bought two $2 cards at the vending machine, paying $4 in cash. Let's take Civic Center to the San Francisco Airport, a trip I made over the weekend to see if the scam worked as a Streetsblog tipster had suggested. Then ride BART where ever you desire and you will never have to pay more than $2. Pay cash and do it at a Muni Metro vending machine in downtown San Francisco if you really don't want to be traceable. Buy a bunch of them this way, if you like. At any retailer or vending machine that sells Clipper, load the minimum $2 dollars on a new Clipper card. Here's how the scam works, and mind you it is especially effective on BART, where you don't have fare inspectors or conductors to check your Clipper card and catch you. Or maybe you did and you hoped to fly under the radar? And you probably didn't realize it's set up with the perverse economic incentive to game the system, whereby you can scam distance-based fare operators like BART out of most of the cost of your trip. Your card balance will not be updated until you have tagged your card and loaded the value.Of all the ways you can use your Clipper smart card for payment on transit agencies throughout the Bay Area, you probably didn't realize you could use it like a credit card, spending up to $10 more than the value on the card. Please note that when you add value online, it can take up to 3 days for the value to be available to be loaded onto your card, and you must tag your card to a card reader to load the value. Please read along with us below and help us understand what this means. Also, there is a second cryptic step, according to the confirmation page on the website about your balance not being loaded until you've tagged and loaded it, or something. ![]() You see, after paying your $70 for a Muni+Bart FastPass, you still have to wait 24 to 72 (!) hours for your payment to register and for the card to start working. ![]() Right?īut no! This is in fact not a quick and one-step process, and like so much that Muni touches it is already a little bit broken. Having procured a free card from one of the representatives at Civic Center one day last month, the only step that seemed to remain was going online and putting an August FastPass on there. SFist Jay decided to use his first Clipper card yesterday, given that it was August 1st and Muni is phasing out the paper FastPasses soon. ![]()
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